How to and here to get the food– in Boston

We all are surrounded by convenience stores, such as 7-Eleven, but those do not provide real food. They have been implanted for professional microwavers or stopgap solutions. As students or young active workers, those places are great for a gallon of milk with a pack of cereal, not to prepare a real dinner. If you shop smart, two hours every ten days are enough to fill your fridge with healthy and tasty food at affordable price without ordering once.

Spread out nationally, different brands of supermarkets have been established in most American cities. On the East Coast, Shaws Supermarkets prevail. Customers can get anything they want rather cheaply. However, fruits and vegetables stay expensive.

Whole Foods is amazing for its selection of foreign products, cheese, all sorts of fresh bread, meat, and a variety of specific products, but it remains one of the most expensive supermarket. Trader Joes is the perfect mix between the previous two. It combines good products at great prices and for the most part is organic. When the three above are close enough to the place you live, excuses not to feed properly one’s self become hard to find.

Peapod.com has established itself as one of America’s leading Internet grocers. With a few clicks, your food gets delivered almost in your bed.

­­­In a city like Boston, the Hay Market, close to Government Center is a fresh market where you can find great deals for fruits and vegetables. $1.50 for three avocados, or two pounds of oranges. And if you have a car, use it. Russo’s farmer’s market in Watertown, M.A., has a large selection of fresh food; anything from that goes from fruits and vegetables to cheese, soups and a variety of olive oils.

Also, we do not always think about restaurants that have “Fine Fast Food” corners, such as the Italian Restaurant Bottega Fiorentina on Newbury Street in Boston where you can ask for half a pound a thinly sliced prosciuto that will cost less than $5.

Small delicatessens are great places to bring fancy restaurant food home at a lower cost.

Is eating organic a symbol of health ?

By Eleonor Picciotto

BOSTON- For the past few years, the discussion around the virtues of organic versus non-organic food has become more popular although the real argument is, does eating organic mean eating healthy?

Mind-set, knowledge, money and time are the main factors determining what people eat at what cost. The debate has been stepped up because people are falsely informed.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), there are different definitions of “organic,” which makes it confusing to many consumers. To use the term “organic” officially, it has to be certified by going through USDA standards. But people are faking the ‘organic’ idea by using the term and by practicing ‘organic methods’ without being certified to do so.

The organic issue has become a hot topic in recent years “because it brings in more money,” explains Ilene Bezahler, publisher and editor of the Edible Boston magazine. “Everybody is using that to sell their products because organic is viewed as higher quality, which it is,” she continues.

Eating organic means eating products grown without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge or genetically modified organisms. For the animal products of dairy and meat, it means that animals that produced them were not given antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic conveys the idea of better quality food, but there is a constant amalgam made between eating organic, eating local and eating healthy because eating organic does not always mean eating healthy. To combine them all, Avital Pato Benari a health and nutrition educator, emphasizes the need to invest time and money.

Eating organic also involves expenses. Organic farmers do not receive federal subsidies, so prices reflect of the true cost of growing. They do not benefit from the economy of scale that large growers receive. Instead of using chemicals to get rid of weeds with massive spraying, organic farmers get rid of them manually, which causes higher labor costs.

“The price of veggies keep going up where the price of Coca-Cola becomes practically free,” argues Benzahler, “Our whole fruit system is totally screwed up.”

It raises the question of how could we properly spend our money to eat organic and healthy?

Health is the No.1 factor, for Christine Mathieu, a French organic vegetarian, mother of four children who probably does not weight more than 110 pounds. “I’m not an ayatollah of organic food, it’s too expensive,” she says. From a health standpoint, she explains that some veggies can be eaten non-organic without putting her “life in danger.” But from a green point of view, “to be coherent I should buy organic despite the price,” she says.

Madeline Lanciani, chef and owner of a bakery in New York, admits that when customers ask if the milk in their coffee is organic, she replies no, explaining that if they want some, they will have to pay double for their coffee. “They want organic, but nobody wants to pay for it,” she says.

Lanciani who says she uses about 10 percent of organic ingredients, would be willing to pay more to bake fully organic, “but the market industry that supply the products for the food industry does not produce bulk quantities that makes it cheaper,” she explains, “otherwise I would get it right away.” At home she tries to eat organic, “ and I don’t care about the price,” she says.

Along the same line, Carolyn Cosgrove Payne, a Boston University student who became almost 100 percent organic at the end of her freshman year, mentions the sense of priority in her expectations, “you know what you are paying for.” Payne says that eating organic is a little more expensive, but she asks “what is your satisfaction to pay four dollars for a gourmet beverage at Starbucks that will last fifteen minutes, when you can use the money for something healthy?” She has a point.

The major problem is not about how much money to spend but where to spend it, she says.  Mathieu brings up a dilemma: spend a lot at Whole Foods on organic products or drive 20 miles to go to an organic farmers market and spend less. Most people would go for the first option, non-organic at the closest supermarket.

Aside from the debate organic v. non-organic, access and proximity are determinant factors. According to USDA, there are 7000 farms in Massachusetts only 150 are certified organic, but more farmers use ‘organic techniques’. Only official labels such as QAI  or USDAprove that the product you are buying is certified organic. Most of the products available at the grocery store Whole Foods are certified.     Payne says that at Trader Joe’s, “everything they sell has an organic version.” And when she does not have time to shop, there is still the option to order online “veggies boxes,” on bostonorganics.com for example, where prices start at $24 a box.

Benari explains how hard it is to eat five vegetables a day, especially in an urban, working or college environment where people do not want to spend much money on food or time to prepare it. This is why, “obesity problems have increased,” she says, “ It is a crappy situation the U.S. have.” Benari promotes the consumption and the purchase of frozen organic fruits and vegetables, because it is cheap, convenient and just as good as fresh ones when cooked.

“It is a hippie thing to eat organic,” says Noah Zaltz, 21, who lived most of his life in Westchester, N.Y.  Although, he does not eat “consciously” organic, Zaltz said he thinks organic prepared food tastes better and fresher than non-organic.

On the contrary, the New York baker Lanciani said she thinks the difference is negligible. “There is no way to find out whether something is organic or not,” she says. The question of the taste is disputable where the question of health is not.

“I am concerned about the health of my family,” says Mathieu, “but also by the health of the workers in the farms.” Because eating organic is scientifically proven to be good for you and the environment, says Benari. It also involves taking more time to get informed and organized about various food places to get the groceries from, to eat organic, healthy and locally at lower costs.

“Anything man makes is processed food,” says Joe Finn, grocery manager at the supermarket Shaws. “The American diet promotes diseases,” he adds. Changing the mentality

towards food should be the first effort people should make. Payne believes that people need to see the after effects of what they are eating now.

Benari says that “the minute you talk about organic, you shut people off.” She explains that the meat and dairy products college students consume without paying attention are full of hormones. She wants to have students more concerned. Ironically she wonders, “they might want to have kids later and we don’t know how fertilizers affect human fertility.”

The effect of non-organic v. organic on the human body has yet to be proven. But “ If you are not eating healthy but organic, it still has an affect on your body,” says Lanciani, “You don’t eat the chemicals.”